


Dreams

by Davincsoo



Category: Chanhun - Fandom, Onlay, Setao - Fandom, Seyeol - Fandom, Taohun - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, EXO - Freeform, I really love the idea of kpop and merpeople im sorry, It doesnt get out of hand though, M/M, Merpeople, SHINee - Freeform, The underage is between chanyeol and sehun, Undecided smut, Underage Drinking, Vixx - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8101225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davincsoo/pseuds/Davincsoo
Summary: Sehun is on his way to a two week trip to Jeju island when he starts having dreams of water and a guy named Zitao.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please, for the love of god, ignore the left aligned symbols until I can find a way to fix it on mobile. I also have to go through and find the parts that need italicized.... (Edit: fixed the italicized parts, but can't seem to fix the alignment of the symbols. I will work on that.)
> 
> Aside from that, as this fic goes along, I shall add more warnings or some shit in the tags.
> 
> This fic was cross posted from AFF (My UN on there being LayLaLuv.)
> 
> Also, please take into account that I never bothered to actually google shit on jeju and made a town up that doesn't exist on jeju. I'm sorry, but I'd rather be creative than in accurate.

_Water. Vast amounts of water everywhere and anywhere he looks. It is odd to say the least. Why isn't there sea life and why can't he see a floor? Most importantly, why isn't he running out of air? This is all so strange to him. "Maybe if I swim around for a while," he thinks and forces his body forward. He cups his hands and moves his arms out and around to his sides, swimming forward slowly at first, but then at a steady speed. He still doesn't see anything. It was like in movies when someone shows up surrounded by water and they are seemingly unconscious and nothing but their body is seen._

_But he does see something in the distance. It looks like a dot at first, but then it starts moving toward him rapidly. It scares him honestly and he doesn't know why he was trying to swim away from it, but he is. And he couldn't swim away fast enough because as soon as he was able to get his body moving again, the thing he seen as a dot is now in clear view._

_It's another person; a male with seemingly white hair that would be blonde had they not been completely under water. He is rather attractive too now that his face can be seen and he wonders, just briefly, if he can breathe just as fine too until his full body comes into view._

_A tail... This man has a tail... Is he a fish? His eyes fall to the warm reds and gold shimmering scales that moves slowly beneath the man and he reaches out to touch them, but startles when the man screams at him in return. Maybe this guy wasn't one for personal space invasion? He holds his hands up to show that he gets the point and the man smiles at him. He reaches his own hand out, but then pulls it back only to point to his mouth. "Tao," he mouths and then points to him._

_Is that his name? Tao? He looks at him, curiously, and patiently waits for an answer. "Sehun," he mouths in return and Tao's eyes turn to crescents. Sehun watches as Tao reaches down to pull a scale from his tail and looks at him confused when he places the scale in his hand. Tao closes Sehun's fingers over the scale and gives him one more smile before swimming off in the direction in which he came._

•

"Oh Sehun," his mother yells from downstairs. "If you do not hurry up with that room that should've been done an hour ago, I will send your friends home."

Sehun rolls his eyes and shoves the last of the garbage he's been collecting for no good reason into the garbage bag. It's his fourth garbage bag since he started cleaning his mess of a room and he was rather proud of it. It gave his room character or as his mother would so kindly put, _"it looks like the shit your father calls 'art'."_ She doesn't like the art his father makes, not even a little bit. It partly has to do with the popularity he gained from it, but it is mostly because he left her for a college student that admires him as an artist.

"Sehun, I'm not going to tell you again."

"I just finished with the last of the garbage, mom," he yells back at her while tying the last garbage bag up. He was frustrated at the yelling earlier, but now he is just annoyed by it. This always happens when his friends come over. His mother makes him clean his room spotless, all the while yelling at him, and eventually she makes them go home because she claims it to late for him to go out. But she can't do it this time because it's summer.

Summer means he is free to stay out longer than he would be allowed on a school night. Summer means middle of the night trips to the woods to camp overnight and laugh at one another's fretting over every odd sound. Summer means not having to abide by strict school year rules because your mother doesn't want you ruining your chance at a good education and a better job than what your father has. Summer means no worries. Summer means fun.

"Are you actually finished now?" asks his friend--Kim Jongin--from the doorway. He looks around the room and makes a sound of surprise when he sees cleanliness instead of a disaster. "You must really want to go on this road trip, huh?"

Sehun opens his bedroom window for the last time and heaves the garbage bag out of it. "Yes, you ass, I really do. I've spent eleven months saving up for this trip and now that I've got the money for it, I don't intend to let it waste away in the cookie tin I keep it hidden in."

"We are only going down to my friends house on Jeju island. That's hardly something to save up that long for."

"You say that now."

"If you guys don't hurry up, we won't get there until tomorrow morning."

That is Sehun's other friend Hongbin. Unlike Jongin who is shy, but overly confident in his appearance, Hongbin is loud, but not confident enough in his appearance. Hongbin is the oldest of the three by a year. He is eighteen and capable of driving without being accompanied an adult. That saved Sehun and Jongin on many occasions. However, he is in the same year as they are due to mental health issues last year with his last girlfriend.

There wasn't much to what happened, but Hongbin refused to talk about it. "It's not something that I like to think about," he would say and that was the end of the conversation. Sehun didn't pester him about it and went on without knowing what truly happened.

"Grab that duffle bag for me," Sehun orders Jongin and reaches over to the other side of his bed for a suitcase packed with his clothes. Jongin mumbles under his breath, but does it anyway and leaves Sehun's room. "See you in two weeks, Daisy~" Sehun bends down to kiss his pet cat and quickly leaves his room.

•

An hour they've been on the road now and they have had to stop sixteen times for Jongin to pee. Sixteen times and now they are at the seventeenth stop. "You have the bladder of a damn baby, Jongin!" Hongbin yells from the car which startles Sehun awake from the same dream that he had the prior morning. He looks around before sitting up and stretching. Hongbin looks back at him apologetically and cuts the engine. "Sorry about cutting your nap short again. I'm just really irritable without a full eight hours of sleep and Jongin's non-stop need to piss is not helping whatsoever."

"I wasn't having that great a dream anyways," he says tiredly while reaching for a bottle of water sitting on the floor behind Jongin's seat. "Don't worry about it."

"Was it the dream about that guy with the tail?"

Sehun nods after drinking half of the bottle. "He gave me two of his scales this time after I let him play with my legs. It was the strangest thing."

"None of your dreams are normal, Sehun."

"I expect no different honestly."

Hongbin looks over in the direction that Jongin seemed to go and groans. "That asshole made me need to go now too." He gets out of the car and looks in through Sehun's window. "You need to go too or are you good?" Sehun shakes his head and holds up his thumbs. Hongbin gives him a short 'okay' and runs off toward a cluster of bushes.

Sehun is left sitting there with only his thoughts to keep him company. It's Not a bad thing really because he enjoys the silence, but he can't seem to stop thinking about Tao and the scales of his tale. And just thinking about the scales themselves makes his hand hurt. But thankfully he doesn't have to think about it long because both Hongbin and Jongin come back to car.

"I'm just saying, Jongin, that you need to stop drinking so much water. You cannot possibly be that thirsty."

"Well, excuse the hell out of me for feeling thirsty all the damn time, hyung!" Jongin shouts while slamming the passenger's door. He huffs and angrily puts his seat belt on with Hongbin following suit. "I can't help it and I can't help having to get rid of it all either."

"Maybe if you slept like Sehun back there," Hongbin retorts and starts the car again, "we wouldn't be wasting time stopping to let you empty your baby sized bladder."

"It's not even seven yet, hyung, calm down."

Hongbin pulls out onto the road and begins driving again. "Shut up and go back to sleep, Sehun."

Sehun pouts slightly and lays his head back down on his makeshift pillow. He should've known better than to try to get in between these two while they were going at it. He's never able to calm either of them down and one, if not both, always end up telling him to shut up or to stay out of it. And this time, like many others, he does, and goes back to sleep.

♥

_It's the same body of water again. The endless amounts of nothing but water. He's getting angry, but he can't seem to scream or yell or even speak. What did he even expect when he is under water? Is he going to see Tao again? He already seemed to know that answer before Tao appeared in the distance._

_Something seems different about about him this time, though. He isn't swimming toward Sehun, but rather Sehun is swimming toward him. As he gets closer, Tao appears to be struggling with something. Rope is it? No, not rope. A net. Tao is struggling with a net. When Sehun reaches Tao, Tao is wriggling and tugging at the thick net that fishermen use to catch fish. Sehun was confused for a moment, but then he realizes what is happening._

_Tao is being caught. Is it intended or an accident? He doesn't know. All he does know is that Tao is in trouble and Sehun can't help him. Even when Tao screams for him to help him, he doesn't. He doesn't do anything. He can't do anything._

•

Sehun wakes up with a start and forces Hongbin to pull over. Once he does, Sehun comes flying from the car and immediately vomits onto over grown grass. He hears Hongbin come up beside him and begins to rub his back while he continuously brings up everything his stomach was holding. He stopped shortly after when his stomach no longer had anything left for him to bring up. Hongbin handed him water to rise his mouth out while Jongin shoved mints in it afterwards.

"I didn't know that you get car sick," Jongin says tiredly.

"He doesn't," Hongbin answer for him. He orders Sehun to drink more water after the mints melt away only after he makes him sit down. "Was it bad this time? The dream, I mean."

"I don't know what it was," Sehun answers after finishing off the rest of the water. "He was tangled up in this net and I thought that he was being caught, but I don't know. I just woke up feeling utterly sick that I didn't help him. It felt that real...."

"Some dreams can feel that real."

Sehun looks up at Hongbin and swallows hard before putting the rest of him in the car. Hongbin just sighs and shuts the door. Jongin gets in the back of the car rather than the front and Sehun silently thanks him by resting his head on his shoulder. "Wake me when we get there, yeah?"

Jongin nods. "Sure thing."


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: asshole!Jinki

If screaming were a song, it would be an angry song. It would be filled with so much anger, so much fear, and so much confusion. It would be Tao’s song, Sehun thinks. For who knows how long, Sehun has had multiple dreams of Tao caught in the same net, trying his damnedest to get free. And each time, Tao would scream at him with flashes of ‘help’ in his eyes. Those eyes that were crying out to him, pleading for him to just do something–anything to just free him from the net he was tangled up in.

Sehun wanted to help; wanted to free him. And twice he tried, but it didn’t do any good. Tao was still trapped and Sehun was still unable to free him.

When Sehun is woken up, the car is stopped, and only he and Jongin were left sitting in it. Sehun takes the chance to take in his surroundings and he sees that they are stopped at a gas station in what appears to be a small town. “Where are we?” he asks Jongin who looks like he just woke up himself. “And where is Hongbin hyung?”

“We are in some part of Jeju island that doesn’t bring in much attention,” he answers and presses the heels of his palms against his eyes in attempt to rub the sleep from them. “And Hongbin hyung went to pay for gas and grab us some breakfast.”

“How long have you been asleep for?”

“Since your last dream which was around three in the morning, so about four–maybe five hours.”

“I’m sorry that I kept you up…”

Jongin finds Sehun’s bare thigh with his hand and pats at it gently. “Don’t worry about it. What are friends for, right?”

Sehun couldn’t find the words to thank him. He couldn’t even say 'thank you’. He didn’t even really want to talk. It seemed far too exhausting to. Jongin seemed to understand that because he gave his thigh a comforting squeeze before leaning up against the door and using his arm as a pillow to fall asleep again.

Sehun decides to take the chance to empty his bladder before they were on the road again. Leaving Jongin to catch up on the hours of sleep that he lost, Sehun gets out of the car and makes his way around to the side of the gas station where he knows that a men’s bathroom should be. He walks into the restroom and is greeted by the strong smell of some sort of citrus. It wasn’t a horrible smell, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt if someone laid off the air freshener.

“Excuse me,” a rather tall guy politely says to Sehun who was blocking the sinks.

Sehun steps off to the side and lowers his head in a small bow of apology. “Sorry.” Sehun heads for the only available stall, but stops to look back at the guy. He took notice in the white hair that stuck to his forehead and the larger than normal ears that poked through the dampened strands. “You wouldn’t sweat so much if you put your hair in ties.”

_Why did I say that?_

He looks over in Sehun’s direction and laughs slightly. “I know. I just don’t have any.”

“You have nice eyes too. You shouldn’t hide them.”

_Stop talking, Sehun!_

“Thanks, I think…”

“I should probably get in there before I pee myself.”

_Kill me._

“I’m leaving now.”

He gives Sehun one last laugh before leaving the restroom and Sehun promises to keep from talking to anyone he doesn’t know.

Meanwhile, Hongbin is in the gas station trying to con the owner into selling everything he intends to buy for a lower price. “Fifty is a little much considering all these are a day from expiring,” he argues calmly. The owner shrugs and holds out his hand, waiting for the money. Hongbin shakes his head, still refusing. “I’m not even paying for gas… Come on, mister! Twenty-five.”

“Fifty and you can take it all.”

Hongbin looks at him and clicks his tongue. “I bet all these items are damn near spoiled. One call and I will have this entire place shut down.”

The owner’s glare changes into worry and Hongbin smirks at the clear victory he has won. “Leave the money and go before I change my mind.”

“Thank you kindly, mister,” Hongbin says with a childish grin and gathers up all three of the bags. He turns on his heels and his mood goes from good to annoyed in three seconds flat when he sees Jongin asleep in the car again. He storms out of the gas station and drops the bags in the passenger seat before walking around to Jongin’s door and opening it. Jongin jerks awake and flails to keep himself from falling out of the car. “I thought that I told you to stay awake?”

“You did, but Sehun kept me from getting any good amount of rest, so…”

“Where is Sehun?”

“I went to use the restroom,” Sehun says as he comes around the corner. “It’s a mess in there, so I wouldn’t chance using it.”

“Then why did you?” asks Hongbin who shuts Jongin’s door rather hard and gets into the driver’s seat after.

“I had to pee, hyung. It felt like my bladder was going to explode right in your car. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“My father would kill me,” he grumbled and drops a bag in the back. “Now get your 'pretty’ ass in this car so that we can get to my friends house before he decides to make us do things.”

•

'Do things’ is exactly what this friend made them do. He introduced himself as Lee Jinki, 'the man who gives boat rides for a low price’. When they arrived at his beach house, he made them clean out his storage room that they are now using as a bedroom.

“Well, at least he didn’t ask us to do anything else,” Jongin tells Hongbin in attempts to calm him. “That’s something right?”

“That’s only because he had to give a couple a boat ride,” he reminds them and lays down on his futon. “The dick probably would have made us cook him lunch too.”

“You seem to have some issues with Jinki hyung,” Sehun points out and Jongin snorts, but doesn’t say anything. Hongbin makes as if to throw his pillow at Sehun, but doesn’t when Sehun throws his hand up in surrender. “I’m just saying that because you talk about him with resentment. Why come here if you don’t want to be here?”

“You really should stop hanging around Yixing.”

Yixing is their other friend, from China. He moved to South Korea when he was in elementary school with his parents and he and Hongbin met him in middle school. He is a really nice and kind guy who gives more than he takes. He will bend over backwards to help anyone that needs it and in anyway he can. But most importantly, his pain doesn’t matter so as long as he is making people happy and bringing happiness.

“Where is he anyway?”

Hongbin shrugs and rolls over on his side. “I haven’t heard from him since the start of summer.”

That is really odd, Sehun thinks. Yixing isn’t one for not keeping in touch with people. Even on his frequent trips to China, he always made sure to call at least one of them. For him to not have called anyone in almost two months… It was odd.

♥

_Something was different, very different. He isn’t under water this time, but he is still in water. An ocean or sea maybe? He isn’t sure which, but he could see two people not too far away from him. One, he could see, is Tao who has worry caked on his face. He is talking a mile a minute and the other person is just floating there, seemingly not saying a word._

_He needed to get closer._

_And getting closer wasn’t a problem. What is the problem is that he can’t hear what they are saying and he can’t see the face of the person that he is talking to. It’s like the person was a blur in his vision that he can’t seem to rub clear. As much as he tried, he couldn’t. Maybe it was on purpose? Maybe he couldn’t see a face because he isn’t supposed to see one._

_There’s a flash of light in the distance and suddenly the scene changes from day to night. He is floating near a mess of docks where boats are tied up to posts, vacant, and unused. He sees Tao near a rather large and expensive looking boat, looking up at the same blurred face. He looks sad, worried, and maybe even angry._

_“I don’t understand why you keep coming and then going.”_

_This Sehun could hear. He could hear Tao speak his language as clearly as the water hitting the sides of the boats._

_“That’s not an excuse. Your place is here, with family, with me. Not with those blobs of flesh that trash our home with their trash they call food and their bodily fluids.”_

_“That’s harsh,” Sehun thinks, but doesn’t completely disagree._

_“He can come and ask him himself,” he yells in a whisper. “If that human is so worried about him, he knows where we are. We aren’t stopping him or keeping him from talking to him.”_

_Sehun wonders who he was talking about. Whoever it was, Tao definitely doesn’t like him._

♥

Sehun woke up to Jinki standing in the doorway of their room with a glass of water in his hand. Not only is he lying in nothing but his briefs, he is also wrapped up in a blanket, and curled up with his back against the wall. It’s weird that Jinki is just standing there without explaining why he is standing there. “Did you need something?” asks Sehun as he moves to sit up. “Or are you just going to stand there and stare at me the entire time?”

“Sorry,” Jinki says finally before walking off.

Sehun still didn’t understand his purpose of standing in the doorway if he wasn’t going to say anything, but he didn’t ponder on it. There wasn’t a need to, honestly. But it was really weird.

“Wait,” he says to himself, and looks around at the room that doesn’t have his two friends sleeping in it. “Where did they go?”

Several minutes and aimless walking around later, Sehun finds himself staring at a painting of a woman on the side of a brick building. It wasn’t completed, but he can already tell that it’ll look amazing. Maybe it’s the way the artist used colors to compliment the life around it? Or maybe it’s the emotion and love that you can clearly see in piece?

He is so mesmerized by the painting that he doesn’t even notice the man standing just a few feet away from him until he clears his throat.

“You’re that kid from the gas station bathroom,” he shouts slightly, and drops some white paint into a small pint sized cup.

Sehun blinks at him and nods even though it wasn’t a question. “And you’re the man that obviously thought my advice was worth taking.”

He has his hair pulled back in a way he could wrap a hair tie around and it further proves how nice his eyes are.

“It’s really windy today and I can’t focus with hair flying in my line of vision, so it’s more convenient this way.” He sets the can of paint down on the ground and picks up a brush. He dips it into the cup and takes the brush over to an empty space that appears to be the start of a dress. “Anyways. What brings you all the way out here for?”

“I _was_ looking for my friends, but I gave up, and started walking around instead.”

“They are probably at that bomb fire on the beach that some rich kid is throwing. You could try there.”

“I could, but beach parties aren’t really my thing.”

“They aren’t bad if you are going to get wasted.”

“Then why aren’t you there?”

He stops on a particular rough part of some bricks and tilts his head to the side. “I don’t really enjoy spending my time around people that I’m never going to see again. It’s a waste of time that I can be spending on something far more important.”

“Like painting a woman on the side of a building that isn’t yours?” asks Sehun who didn’t mean to ask the question out loud. The man snaps his head around looking quite insulted and Sehun’s steps back a few steps in fear of whatever this guy might do. “I didn’t mean to say that… I just- I’m sorry!”

And he is running away from other situation that he caused; no thanks to his uncontrollable urge to say whatever he is thinking.

•

He eventually finds Jongin and Hongbin by a couple of girls who are hanging all over them and shoving their chests in their faces. Jongin just laughs it off and Hongbin seems far too into it. Which is odd because he has never acted like that around girls or let girls act like that around him. But then he seen a can of beer in his hand and it all made sense.

“Sehun,” he calls out to him once Sehun finds a spot near the fire to sit. He says something to the girl that was now on his lap, but Sehun doesn’t catch it due to the loud music playing. “Sehun come say hello to my friend, Yena.”

Sehun just shakes his head, reluctant.

“Why don’t you go grab something to drink?” asks Jongin who shouts at him over the music. “Relax a little and have some fun!”

“Drinking and falling over myself is not my idea of fun,” he says and looks around at all the people dancing. They were having fun, out of their minds wasted, and careless about the world around them. He envies them. To be able to do these things without worry… “I think that I’m just going to go for a swim before it gets too dark.”

They’ve stopped listening to him, he notices. They were too wrapped up in their own form of fun to even notice him sitting just a few feet away from them. It’s really downing, he thinks.

•

Despite what he said, he doesn’t go swimming. He isn’t in the mood for it anymore. He ended up back in front of the brick building with the painting instead. “It’s actually pretty nice,” he says in an approving tone. From what he can see with the remaining daylight, all but a few parts of the woman’s dress is finished. It must be someone the man cares about for him to have painted her on the side of a building that he doesn’t own.

“Are you back to further insult me?”

Sehun turns around as the man comes up behind him and shakes his head. “I just ended up coming back here somehow. And I didn’t mean to insult you or offend you. It just sort of slipped out before I could stop it.”

“It didn’t sound like a slip to me,” he says and continues walking toward the building.

Sehun doesn’t know why, but he got up and followed behind him at a distance. He felt awkward walking into the building, but after seeing so many paintings of the same woman outside, he just felt like an asshole. “You own this building,” he realizes, feeling guiltier by the minute.

“Not that it’s any business of yours, but yes, yes I do.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to people I don’t know. Kind of like how I shouldn’t let people I don’t know in here.”

Sehun fight back the urge to yell and bows quickly. “I’m Oh Sehun. I’m seventeen and I don’t like alcohol or girls who shove their boobs into guys faces.”

The man just stops after dropping a bag, and a pizza box on the only table in the room, and turns to face Sehun entirely. He doesn’t say anything for the longest before he bursts into laughter. “You are one funny kid, Oh Sehun,” he chokes out and takes a seat on the nearest chair. His laughter dies down soon after and it leaves him breathless. “I’m Park Chanyeol.”

♥

_Sehun is under water again, moving his hands, and his feet to stay in place. He isn’t seeing anything this time and it worries him, but not for long because soon Tao appears before him; scared, tired, and concerned. In ways he can’t be sure of, Sehun feels that Tao is afraid for him rather than concerned, and he wishes that he could ask why. But he can’t and even if he could, Tao doesn’t give him a chance because he is taking Sehun by the arm, and dragging him further down than where they were._

_Sehun tries to pull his arm free, but Tao tightens his grip, and swims into an opening in a mess of rocks. This takes them to a cave that seems to be used as a home and Sehun feels relieved to see that he can breathe here. And it’s more than that, he can talk here._

_“You need to stay away from Chanyeol,” Tao says firmly with warning when they both rise to the surface. He lets go of Sehun’s arm and reaches down to take a scale from his tail. He places it in Sehun’s hand and makes him close his fingers around it. “I will give you as many of these as you want, just please, stay away from Chanyeol.”_

_“Why?” asks Sehun who had moved to a safe spot to sit. “More importantly, how do you know about Chanyeol?”_

_“Don’t ask questions that I can’t answer and that you don’t want to hear. Just heed my warning, Sehun. Chanyeol isn’t the best person to be hanging around.”_

_“You are making absolutely no sense right now…”_

_“I don’t need to make sense, I just need you to stay away from him.”_

♥

Sehun wakes up just as confused as he was in his dream. What Tao had said made absolutely no sense and it gave him a headache. But it was a dream after all and dreams often tend not to make sense. “God…” He groans and cradles his head in his hands. “What in the hell did I do to cause such a massive pounding in my head?”

“That would be all from the alcohol you drank,” comes Jinki’s voice from the doorway. He carries with him a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of aspirin in the other. “I don’t condone underage drinking, but I’m glad to see that you had fun with someone responsible last night.”

“I wasn’t drinking though,” Sehun clarifies, and holds his hands out for the glass of water when he looks up at Jinki. “I went down to the beach where that party was at and left because I don’t find drinking yourself wasted fun.”

“Well according to the guy that brought you home,” Jinki begins and takes Sehun the glass of water, “you were drinking so much that you passed out. I mean, at least you were able to tell him how to get here.”

“I never told him where I am staying though…”

“He said that you just freely say anything when you’re drunk.”

“Oh god. Not again…”

Jinki hands him to aspirin and raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“Well, okay then. If you feel up to eating, I will make you some breakfast for that hangover of yours. God knows you and those other idiots need it.”

Sehun watches him walk out of the room and wonders for a split second if he had to do this often. But he soon forgot it when his stomach turned and he was all too quick to run to the bathroom.


	3. Chapter three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asshole Jinki strikes again.

The smell of spoiled fish was getting strong, he notices. It was starting to seep from behind the basement door and creep its way into what used to be the studio. "He must not be eating his food again," he speaks thoughtfully. He puts his brush back into the jar of blue paint and leaves his half painted on canvas to check out the source of the smell. And sure enough, he walks down the dimly lit basement stairs to find a pile of spoiled fish sitting at the last stair. "Was it not fresh enough for you?"

There wasn't an answer.

"How long do you intend to starve yourself, Zitao?"

There still wasn't an answer.

And that was fine. It didn't bother him. It wouldn't be the first time that he has received the silent treatment from the younger merman. "You should know," he starts while cleaning up the mess, "that starving yourself dead won't free you from this--in the words of yours--hell. I will jump in that tank of yours right along with you and feed you myself if I have to."

Nothing. Not a stir, a look, nothing. Just a still, curled up, and quiet young merman resting on the floor of his tank.

"Well, I guess I will later. I have plans with Sehun in a bit anyways. Cute kid, that one. Not very bright though, I must say. Maybe I will invite him to stay over tonight and use it to my advantage."

This caused the other to rise from the bottom of the tank to above the water in a furious manner. "Don't you dare touch him!" He shouts at the top of his lungs, anger taking over his face. He holds on to the edge of the tank to keep himself up and takes a minute to steady his breathing. "Don't you fucking dare."

"What language you have there, Zitao. What would your parents say if they heard you speaking in such a manner?"

"You keep away from him!"

“What can I do if he is the one that keeps coming back to me?” He walks over to the freezer and takes out another cooked fish. He tosses it into the tank and heads back upstairs. “Don’t let that one spoil this time.”

♥

Sehun looks down at the cloudy soup with chunks of questionable things and swears that it is a joke. “This can’t be edible,” he thinks aloud. Both Jongin and Hongbin agree. If he hadn’t brought up all that there was to bring up twenty minutes prior, he thinks that he might vomit again.

“It’s soup, not poison,” Jinki says and sits down at the table with him. “It only looks terrible because you three are sick to your stomach. It will make you feel better after you eat it, I promise you.”

“Or it might kill us,” Hongbin mumbles, not even attempting to try it.

“I don’t want to die as a virgin high school student, hyung,” Jongin whines.

“Just shut the hell up and eat the soup.”

And they all do, slowly, but surely. By the end of the bowl, they all were running in different directions: Sehun to the bathroom, Hongbin to the garbage can, and Jongin outside. And Jinki sits there, amused, as the soup works on the three.

•

“What in the hell was in that, hyung?” asks Hongbin, who's sitting at the table again not too long after Sehun and Jongin. “I thought you said that that was supposed to make us feel better, not like shit ran over.”

“I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell you what was put in it.”

Hongin raises an eyebrow at him. “And that was…?”

“Vomit inducers.”

And that was when hell broke loose. Put shortly, Hongbin exploded and went for Jinki. Jinki seen it coming and put Hongbin on his back. Jongin and Sehun, however, left the room before it all went down. They ended up showering the gross feeling off of themselves while Hongbin and Jinki duked it out in the kitchen.

“What are you doing today?” asks Jongin as he slips on a graphic white tank and black shorts.

Sehun puts on a plain white shirt and a pair of blue jeans. “I have plans with someone I met yesterday.”

“Plans to do what?”

“I’m not sure, actually. I just remember telling him that we should hangout today and him agreeing. I vaguely remember him saying that he’d choose the place. Or something of that nature.”

“Did you meet him at that bonfire last night?”

“I didn’t stay there more than two minutes, Jongin, so no. I didn’t meet him at the bonfire last night.”

Jongin just pouts and shoves his feet into the flip flops he brought along with him. “If you care at all, me and Hongbin hyung are meeting up with a few people from the bonfire.”

Sehun nods while slipping into his own pair of flip flops. “Have fun. Those girls seemed... ...nice.”

"How did you know that they were girls?"

"You didn't have to say anything for me to know that they are who you meant."

"Why don't you sound as thrilled as we are?"

"Because, Jongin," Sehun begins as he shoves his wallet into his back pocket, "you two didn't care enough to want to spend your time with me at that bonfire last night, so I don't care who you spend your time with today."

Jongin takes a step back, as if this were a battle and he just got defeated. "Ouch."

"Imagine how I felt." Sehun's phone buzzes as he slides it into his pocket, but he ignores it. He stands there for a moment to make sure that he didn't forget anything. "Ah, sunglasses."

He walks back over to grab his sunglasses from his duffel bag and he puts them on. Without saying anything else to Jongin or giving him the chance to say something to him, he leaves the room and heads outside where he is greeted by harsh winds and smoldering heat. If it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t want to spend the day with Jinki, he would have walked right back inside the air conditions house. So dreadfully, he walks his way in the direction of Chanyeol’s and hope to the heavens above that wherever Chanyeol is taking him is somewhere cool and not outside.

•

It took him far too long to get to Chanyeol’s. The further away from the ocean that he got, the hotter it felt, and the more he hated himself for leaving the house. But he didn’t turn around regardless because the more he got closer to Chanyeol’s, the excitement to be seeing him again got stronger and stronger. And it’s ridiculous because the both of them just met and are practically strangers. Who feels so strongly for someone that they just met?

“Whatever,” he says aloud and walks up to the entrance of the building. “It’s not like I’m crushing on the guy, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Not that crushing on a guy would be bad or anything… Because it isn’t.”

_What am I even saying right now?_

“Why are you having a conversation with yourself?” asks Chanyeol from a window not too far above the door Sehun stands in front of. “Has the heat gotten to your head?”

Sehun coughs and stupidly pulls his phone out to act as if he was using it. “Yeah, okay, hyung. You two have fun! Mm~”

Chanyeol looks at him as if to ask if he really just played that off as a phone call and disappears back inside. Sehun hears the sound of the window shutting and stands there, embarrassed, while Chanyeol comes down to let him into the building. A minute later, the door opens and Chanyeol appears carrying a basket of small tubes of paint.

“Come in before you pass out,” he urges and leaves the door open for Sehun to come in. He drops the basket of paints beside a blank canvas and goes in search of some brushes. “I have a painting that is due this weekend and the buyer just gave me the notice right before you got here. I told him that there was no way that I could start it on a tuesday and have it done before at least saturday, but he insisted that I do it anyway. He says that it’s an anniversary gift that absolutely can’t be put off any longer. Can you believe that? Like, who buys paintings as gifts?”

“I suppose people that want an artistic touch to a memory for the person receiving the gift.”

Chanyeol finds some brushes in a drawer behind a big abstract painting and brings them back over to the canvas. “I suppose that that makes sense if you put it that way.”

Sehun looks around at all the paints as if he is seeing them for the first time. “I didn’t even think that this building was still a business… I thought that it was just something that you used for the single bedroom apartment upstairs.”

“I mean, it’s not really. Not like other businesses in this town. I’m the only worker and my customers are rich people from around jeju that are into rookie artists. No one recommends me or knows where this place is. They have a number to reach me at places that have my paintings  in or on them. They call me, tell me what they want and when they want it, arrange a meeting place and buy my work if it meets the picture that they had in their head.”

“So… ...like a business?”

Chanyeol laughs and drops the brushes into some empty glass jars. “I guess so.”

“How much do they pay you on average?” asks Sehun as he walks around to look at the paintings up close. He stops at one that grabs his interest, one that resembles someone that he has seen before. He goes to move smaller paintings in front of it, but is pulled away from them just as he catches shimmers of gold.

“There are a few loose floor boards over there, so stay away from that area.” He lets go of Sehun’s arm and takes a few steps back. “And on average, my paintings sell for two or three hundred. Depending on the size, they sell for a bit higher.”

“Well then that’s not too bad considering most rookie artists would be lucky if someone even took interest in their work.”

“It’s enough to pay the rent on this place, so I’m not complaining.”

“I hope to have a career in something that I am good at once I graduate high school.”

Chanyeol slides on his shoes and shoves his things into his back pockets. “What are you good at?”

Sehun looks down at the floor and doesn’t pay any mind to the eyes trying to read him. “I don’t know. My mom would say that I’m good at ruining her life.”

“That sounds really terrible…”

“You would think, but I know that she doesn’t mean it.”

“Sehun?”

“What?”

“Have you ever had what American’s like to call ‘fried twinkies’?”

Sehun looks up at him and gives him a weird look. “What in the fuck is a fried twinkies?”

♥

“I must say,” Sehun begins with a mouth full of fried twinkie, “this is really fucking delicious.”

Chanyeol chuckles and nods while chewing a bit of his own. “It really is delicious, but so bad for you.” He looks up from his half eaten twinkie to see Sehun with a messy face and he snorts. “You have such a mess going on on your face,” he says after swallowing what he had in his mouth. “I don’t even know how that is actually possible.”

Sehun grabs his napkin and begins to clean his face of said mess. “Did I get it all?”

“No, you actually didn’t. Here.” Chanyeol takes his own napkin and reaches out to clean off what Sehun didn’t. “There.”

“Thanks…” he mumbles and finishes off the last of his twinkie without making a mess. He sits there quietly and rather awkwardly and catches Chanyeol staring at him, but he doesn’t say anything.

“So,” Chanyeol starts, “why are you on Jeju and not vacationing somewhere else?”

Sehun swallows the last bits if his twinkie down with his soda and holds back a belch. “My mom doesn’t trust me in a different country, so this was the deal breaker. And it was cheaper.”

“You’re mom seems overprotective.”

“She cares about my well being, so I deal with it most of the time.”

“And the other times?”

“I’m eating American carnival food, with a guy that I just met, on a date.”

“So hanging out became a date, huh?”

Sehun stops in the midst of cleaning up his mess to stare blankly at Chanyeol. “Did I say date?” Chanyeol nods and Sehun blinks. He clears his throat and slowly gets up to throw his trash away. Did he really say date? Did that really leave his mouth? He drops the trash into the bin and stands there staring at the mess residing in the bin. Why did he say date instead of hanging out? “It was a slip of the tongue. Yeah, a slip of the tongue.”

“Do you talk to yourself often?” asks Chanyeol who had walked up beside him just moments before. “Or is this a new thing that you’ve started doing?”

Sehun jumps slightly and tries to laugh it off as if it never happened. “It would seem like that, huh?”

“I want to show you something.”

“What else is there to show me?”

•

What Chanyeol had shown him was unlike anything that he has ever seen. And he has seen some pretty amazing things in all his seventeen years. “I don’t know what to say.” he tells Chanyeol as the both of them stare down at a realistic painting of what would appear to be a massive hole in the road showing a large body of water a long ways underneath it. It’s absolutely beautiful. “This is unlike any of the other paintings in your studio. And it’s actually good.”

“That didn’t sound offensive at all.” Chanyeol says with a tad bit of sarcasm lacing each word. He looks down at his artwork and smiles at it. “But in all seriousness, I understand what you mean. The paintings in my studio--while most of them are unfinished--lack emotion. They are simply me not knowing what to feel to be able to paint anything to represent a certain emotion.”

“And this one?” Sehun looks over each and every inch of painted tar and takes in the art literally at his feet. “What is the emotion behind this one?”

“This one says that no matter how strong the road you walk on is, it could break at any given moment and you’ll fall into the endless waterfall of emotions that you’ve built that road up to hide.”

Sehun nods, truly understanding the painting and it’s meaning. “Wow, Chanyeol ssi, that’s deep.”

Chanyeol laughs and slides his hands into his pocket. “I painted this about a couple of weeks after I moved here. I didn’t have a place to stay actually, so I went around trying to find means of making any sort of cash that I could, so that I could rent a room at the very least until I could find a steady job. I found this American woman sitting in this very bookstore and she was reading a book on how to speak better in Korean. Which was funny considering you can find at least three out of six people that speak English in this town.”

“I felt the need to mention that to her, so I walked in and introduced myself to her. And I remember the startled expression she wore when I spoke in English for her. Her Korean wasn’t so great and she was pleased to find someone that could speak English. I ask her, ‘why are you even in a country that you can’t communicate in?’ She answers, ‘I was left an entire house and this bookstore by a grandparent that I don’t remember ever knowing.’”

“Well, that makes sense,” Sehun says thoughtfully. “I think.”

“It didn’t make sense to me either and I mentioned that to her. But she didn’t share much more with me on the subject. So I ask her about her reasonings for learning a language that she didn’t intend on using if she didn’t seem like she was going to stay?”

“And her answer?”

“She didn’t have any reason back in America to stay, so she figured, ‘why not make a fresh start in a place that sparks my interest.’”

“But none of this explains why she is related to this painting.”

“She is related to this painting because she hired me to paint it.” He turns toward this bookstore that is closed and sighs as his mind is filled with a pleasant sense of nostalgia. “She wanted people that were or are having a hard time to use this bookstore as a momentary means of escape. She told me that while she was trying to learn a language foreign to her, she found living here hard, but she found a haven in this bookstore and it kept her sane and wanting to strive for the people who had it just as rough, if not worse than her.”

“I guess that the painting makes a tad bit more sense now.” Sehun tells him after a few minutes of taking all of what he was told in. He looks over at the bookstore as well and notices a picture hanging in the window that he can see is of Chanyeol and a woman that he can only believe to be the lady in which Chanyeol was talking about. “Do the two of you still talk?”

Chanyeol nods. “Not as much now that she has gotten married and is expecting her first child, but I do see her a few times a month and make sure to email her once a week if I don’t talk to her over the phone. She recently hired someone to man the bookstore being that she doesn’t have time to do it right now. Her husband talked her into it. He cares about her a lot and she absolutely loves the hell out of him.”

“Is she the person that you are painting on the outside of your studio?”

It is a prying question, but Sehun is curious and can’t help but to ask.

“No, she isn’t. Like I said, she is just a lady that I wanted to help. And somewhere down the road, we became good friends that look out for each other. That’s it.”

“Then who is the person that you are painting-”

“I understand your curiosity to know everything there is to know about me, but you don’t need to know everything.”

It wasn’t a light hearted comment, but a heavily threatening one. A threat that Sehun didn’t dare ignore. “I’m not curious about everything you have yet to let me know.” And it wasn’t a lie. He really didn’t want to learn anything more than what he is going to learn because he won’t be staying long enough to make much of a relationship with him. “I’m just curious about her because you seem to really care for the owner of this bookstore.”

“I care for her like I care for my older sister.” he sighs heavily and walks away from the painting and the bookstore. He stops when he is on the other side of the street and he breathes in the warm summer breeze. “She isn’t anything else to me than that. And the same thing goes for her.”

“Then why tell me about her?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted you to see the very first painting that I did for money. The one painting that I’m really proud of.”

“It’s really beautiful, Chanyeol ssi.”

“I thought we were passed formalities?”

Sehun follows him over to the other side of the street and bumps into him gently. “Will you let me call you ‘hyung’ then?”

Chanyeol peers down at Sehun before shrugging. “So as long as you drop the ‘ssi’, you could call me ‘oppa’ for all I care.”

“You’d let me call you ‘oppa’? Do you have some weird kink that I should know about?”

“Do _you_ have any kinks that I should know about?”

Sehun looks at him in disbelief that he really just asked him that question. “I’m only seventeen, dude.”

“I was fifteen when I first had sex, dude.”

“Well, I’m not you, so…”

“I bet that you have thought at least once what it would be like.”

The grin that is plastered on Chanyeol’s face right now tells Sehun that he is implying something that he has never even not once thought about. Never. Not even a little.

“Oh my god,” he mumbles before breaking out into an amused laughter. “You seriously just thought about it at this very moment.”

Sehun doesn’t say anything because he is honestly too damn embarrassed to even look Chanyeol in the face. And what is worse is that for a hot second, he thought of Chanyeol and what it would be like to engage in such actions with him. The thought of it dancing in his brain makes him dizzy--he is so embarrassed and he breaks into a run to escape the laughter and calls coming from Chanyeol not too far behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should warn you again about what you are getting yourself into by reading this fic. I'm proud of the creation of it, but this is seriously one messy fic that is just me being uneducated on the wonders of the world and improvising with my knowledge of what I do know. 
> 
> But bless your hearts for making it thus far really. You guys are great. 
> 
> Also on a side note, I broke my tablet and have been using my brothers laptop to update, so my updates will come slow because I don't have a lot of chances to write.


	4. Chapter 4

It was just a bit after six when they finally went back to Chanyeol’s. It was of course after they window shopped for an hour and took pictures in every photo booth that they could find. “I can’t believe you have money for all of these,” Sehun says in awe as he looks over all of the pictures that they took.”I mean, they aren’t expensive, but look at how many booths that we went to.”

“I’ve collected a lot of money over the years that I’ve been here, so spending all that was nothing really.”

Chanyeol’s subtle boasting goes unnoticed when Sehun notices an odd sound coming from beneath him. “What’s that sound?” The question isn’t really meant to be answered as he didn’t mean for it to be said aloud, but he hears Chanyeol answer it anyway.

“What sound?”

“It sounds faintly like water splashing.”

Chanyeol stops before dialing the local chicken place to listen for the so said [[[water splashing]]] that Sehun is hearing. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Do you have a basement or something?”

“Well, yes, but nothing is down there but some empty boxes and extra canvases.”

Sehun tilts his head to the side and clicks his tongue. “That’s really strange. I really could have sworn that I heard water splashing.”

“I mean, if it’s really bothering you that much, you can always go see for yourself that nothing is down there.”

At first, Sehun wasn’t going to bother because maybe there really wasn’t anything down there and maybe he was just hearing things. But then he heard a rather loud thud and he just couldn’t fight away his curiosity “I think that I just might do that.” So with the help of Chanyeol who points him in the right direction, Sehun ends up in the basement where all he finds instead of what he was expecting is just as Chanyeol had said. Nothing but empty boxes and extra canvases.

“See,” Chanyeol begins from behind Sehun, “I told you that nothing but empty boxes and extra canvases were down here.”

Shivers are sent running through Sehun’s body as Chanyeol was breathing against his neck and whispering incoherent things in his ear.  It made him uncomfortable, but he didn’t move away from him.

“It really sounded as if something were down here,” he says while rubbing at his arm that had goosebumps. And it’s when Chanyeol snakes a hand around Sehun’s waist and slides it under his shirt that causes him to move. “Man am I starving. Are you starving? We should go order that food now.”

Sehun goes to walk back upstairs, but Chanyeol stops him. “Why are you in such a big hurry to eat?” he asks as his eyes travel over every part of Sehun. “We have loads of time for that. Why don’t we just enjoy each other’s company for a while?”

“In the basement, though?”

“Why not?”

“There isn’t anything worth staying down here for is why.”

“I’m sure we can find something,” he says before leaning in closer to Sehun and placing his lips against his. And Sehun doesn’t move right away because he was too shocked by the sudden action to really react in anyway. But as Chanyeol pulls him in deeper, his tongue trying to slide past Sehun’s lips, Sehun shoves him away rather roughly and causes him to fall back against the wooden steps. He doesn’t say anything, but Sehun could clearly see the pain and anger in his face and he didn’t want to stick around after he caught his breath. So he moves quickly, but carefully up the stairs and grabs his things before leaving the building just as quickly.

•

As Chanyeol lies awkwardly on the steps, in pain and trying to catch his breath, he listens to the quickly moving footsteps above him and the slam of the front door. “Shit!” he manages to spit out in the midst of pushing himself up and off of the steps. And when he is standing, he does so while he breathes through the throbbing pains in his back. “You can stop hiding now. He left.”

With that being said, the basement that had been nearly empty fills with the things being kept hidden, Zitao and his tank included. However, Zitao appears raging mad and just out of breath as Chanyeol currently is.

“Your sorry ass is lucky that I don’t have access to legs.”

“You’re the one that gave your bracelet away to someone out of the kindness of your heart, Zitao. Not I. I was smart enough not to care who it was and threw mine to the first person that I seen willing enough to take it from me.”

“I really don’t give a damn, Chanyeol. Just get me off of this floor.”

Chanyeol looks at him and laughs as if he just told a joke. “You do realize that you are as heavy as three sacks of rocks right?”

 

Zitao drops his head to the floor and curses under his breath. “I can’t very well put myself back in the gods forsaken tank you’re holding me in.”

Unfortunately, Zitao was right, and Chanyeol refused to let anyone else be aware of his presence if he got help. So even though he didn’t want to, he walks over to help Zitao off of the floor by snaking his hands under his shoulders and lifting him with the strength in his legs. Once they were at a suitable height, Chanyeol orders Zitao to put his arms around his neck while he managed to get the rest of him in his arms. With a grunt, Chanyeol hauls Zitao up and into his arms. “Did I mention that you are as heavy as three sacks of rocks?”

“Yes,” Zitao answers with a groan into Chanyeol’s shoulder. “You’ve mentioned one too many times already.”

Chanyeol carries him over to the tank and stands there as Zitao lets go of his neck to grab hold of the tank and heave himself over it with the help of Chanyeol. After successfully getting back into the tank, Chanyeol drops to the cold and wet ground. panting and watching as Zitao sinks down to the bottom of the tank. “How do you even manage to hold yourself up on the edge of the tank?” Zitao turns his head toward his captor and gives him a look as if he is questioning his smarts. “It was a rhetorical question, asshole.”

♣

Sehun ends up running halfway back to Jinki’s house before slowing down to a slow paced walk. At this point, he wasn’t sure if his heart was racing because of exertion or if it was racing because of the incident with Chanyeol. Either way, he was just glad to be out of the situation he unknowingly put himself in. After minutes of deciding whether or not to walk inside, he curls up on the outside two seater sofa and looks out at the ocean.

Chanyeol had him confused more than he or anyone would know. His head hurt and the replay of it made him dizzy. But looking out at the ocean calmed him and tore his mind away from tonight's events.

•

_Here he was again, in the same large body of water, floating in vast amounts of nothing. It was beginning to unnerve him. It was lost, his chances of ever ending up somewhere else in his dreams. But he went with this anyways because in the end, he would get to dream of Tao again, and it was always a nice thing to dream about. Except when he is yelling at him for hanging around Chanyeol._

_“I don’t understand why it bothers you so much that I am around him.” Sehun says to him as he rests against the slimy semi-smooth surface of the underwater caves walls. “He seems completely harmless.”_

_“You aren’t a very good judge of character, Sehun,” Tao answers as he moves his tail slowly back and forth in the water. “I’m telling you, he isn’t a good guy.”_

_“I’m beginning to think that these dreams are more than just that.”_

_“And what if they were?” asks Tao as he sinks further down into the water, leaving only his head above the surface. “What if these aren’t even dreams, but things that I am wanting you to see, things I want you to hear?”_

_Sehun looks at him as if he has lost his mind. “That’s ridiculous. You’re just a hybrid thought up by the power of my imagination. You couldn’t possibly be real, or even have the ability to do what you are saying that you can.”_

_“But what if I could, Sehun? What If I am actually drawing these scenario’s inside your head just so that I can make you aware of the dangers that you are putting yourself through by sticking around Chanyeol?”_

_Sehun moves his feet back and forth in the water as he ponders on that. He didn’t see how it could be possible, though. He hasn’t ever met Tao or anyone even remotely close to being him. It was just a dream, wasn’t it?_

_But how can he explain how Tao knows about Chanyeol or how dangerous he is? How can he explain why Tao talks as if he has met Chanyeol before, knows him far too well?_

_If he truly thought about it, he couldn’t explain anything._

_“Say this was something you meant for me to see,” Sehun begins, not fully believing Tao, but not completely denying it either. “Why are you so insistent that I stay away from him?”_

_“I can’t tell you that,” he answers apologetically. “At least not yet.”_

•

“Sehun, you need to wake up before you catch a cold.”

Sehun wakes with an ache in his body and a chill in his bones. He slowly opens his eyes to find Hongbin staring at him with concern. “Why are you even still here?” he asks as he sits up, moving over slightly for Hongbin to have room to take the spot beside him. “I thought you’d be out with Jongin and those girls somewhere.”

“It’s only 7:20 in the morning, Sehun. No one is even up yet.”

“Why are you up then?”

“When you didn’t come back last night, we got worried and couldn't sleep. Jongin wasn’t in best of shape, his waist was being a pain, and Jinki hyung had to work, so I stayed up.” He sighs and hands Sehun a cup of coffee. “I wouldn’t have seen you out here had I not come out to see if you were walking back or something. Speaking of which, why didn’t you come inside? It is frigid out here early in the morning.”

“I was avoiding you guys,” he wanted to say, but instead, “I was just looking at the ocean for a bit before going in. It wasn't my intention to fall asleep out here.”

Hongbin has been friends with him long enough to know when something isn’t quite right with him. And it’s never the obvious things; the arms folded across his chest or how quiet he is being, none of that. It’s the lack of touching when he doesn’t need to be, secluding himself from everyone including Jongin and Yixing, two people he loves the most. It’s being distant from his friends, not talking to them when they share the most with each other. It’s those type of things that he notices that other people would look over. “Did something happen last night, Sehun?” he asks carefully, not wanting to upset him, but curious to know why his friend is like this.

Sehun didn’t want to talk about it, not because he wanted to hide it, but because he wasn’t sure how he should say it. So he settles with moving closer to Hongbin and resting his head on his shoulder. “Thanks for the coffee, hyung.”

♣

The waves are really active this morning, Jinki thinks to himself as he read readies his boat for the day's services. He looked up at the sky and noticed a cluster of dark clouds in the distance. He was sure that it wasn’t supposed to storm today, so why does it look like it is going to? “Should I cancel the boat rides today?”

He decides to go and check the weather again, just to see whether or not it’s safe to have people out on open water. As he make his way to his car, he is stopped by a gentle hand on his wrist. He turns around to face this person, startled, and relaxes when he sees a dripping wet Yixing. “What are you doing here?” he asks, hugging him instantly? It’s been so long, it seemed, since the last time he’d seen Yixing that he didn't care that he’s getting wet or the fact that Yixing is pressed against his body, entirely naked. However, it didn’t take him long to realize that Yixing walked around naked and he was quickly backing away to retrieve an extra set of clothing he keeps in the back seat. “You’ve lived on land long enough to build up some sort of modesty, Yixing. Why walk all this way naked?”

Yixing slid on the shorts given to him and shrugged into the shirt. “I didn’t have time to bring something with me, Jinki. I have a purpose for this visit. I need a favor from you.”

Jinki looks at him with a frown, but nods anyway. “What is it about?”

“It’s about Chanyeol.”

♣

“Rise and shine, my dear friend. We’ve got a fun filled day ahead of us.” Chanyeol walks down the basement stairs, carrying some bacon in one hand and his phone in the other. He’d been working all night on something, something that will have Sehun racing back to his arms again and who better else to share it with than the one who cares for him most? “I’ve been working on something, and I want to run it by you first.”

When Chanyeol looks up from his phone, he notices Zitao resting at the bottom of the tank, unmoving, and far too quiet. It was abnormal for him, all things considered. So he walks over to the tank and kicks it gently. “Hey,” he says loudly. He kicks the tank a second time and finally gets a rise out of Zitao. He looks over at him, face emotionless, and blinks. “You have some nerve ignoring me, especially since I am older than you by far. What were you even doing?”

Zitao doesn’t respond at first, just stares, but then he flashes a grin at Chanyeol that makes him cringe. “What did you do?” He places his phone back in his pocket and drops the bacon on the ground. “What in the fuck did you do, Zitao?”

♣

“So Chanyeol has Zitao?” Jinki asks Yixing as he drops a blanket around his shoulders. “How long has he had him?”

“He hasn’t made that clear in my dreams,” he answers. He holds the blanket close and leans into Jinki, who wraps his arms around him shortly after. “He’s only told me that Chanyeol had him and that Sehun isn’t safe. The way he was talking, it sounds as if Chanyeol is still holding a grudge.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s stupid really. But it stems from some land girl that he met when he started frequently coming on land.”

“Is she who is being painted all over town?”

Yixing nods. “See, back when I first came to land, Zitao had warned me to stay away from Chanyeol and anywhere he has been known to go. At this time, what had happened to him was still fresh and it was reported that he was--is rather, on a warpath. Multiple reports have been made of merfolk going missing, noble merfolk, and they are linking it back to Chanyeol. I came originally to investigate the situation, but have lost track of it for a while, until now that is. Zitao had been gone from our city since this past winter, and had been reported missing since Spring. I’ve been back and forth between China and Korea for the past couple of weeks now, trying to figure everything out and playing messenger for the law enforcement.”

Yixing shivers as a gush of cool winds blow around them. “Forgive my babbling. I’ve been without someone that I am comfortable talking with since I told Sehun, Jongin, and Hongbin that I’d come here with them.”

Jinki shakes his head and rubs Yixing’s arm. “I know how rough it’s been with you lately. But if you managed to work me into your busy schedule, is it rude to ask that you stay on the topic of your being here right now?”

Yixing shakes his head in turn and bows his head quickly in apology. “Zitao appeared in my dreams last night, frantically yelling at me to warn Sehun about Chanyeol. ‘I don’t know what it is that he is going to do, but I can promise you that it isn’t any good.’ He kept making me promise that I would warn Sehun about him, keep him away from him if I have to.”

“Why is it so important? Why is Chanyeol being made a threat?”

“Like I told you, he is on a warpath. This land girl, Juri her name was, had become someone important to him. He eventually fell in love with her the longer he spent his time around her. He would gift her things with the most poetic symbolism, paint her when she wasn’t looking, care for her when she became ill. Of course, at this time, he was still able to frequently travel to the city. So this first time he went back in a long time was also his last.” Yixing relaxes under the warmth provided by the blanket and Jinki. “He went before his parent’s and the council, to introduce Juri to them.”

“Wait,” Jinki interrupts. “Are you telling me…”

“That he gave up his legs temporarily just so that she could safely travel underwater?” Yixing asks for him in return. “Yes, he did in fact give his bracelet to her to use. But there is a reason, you see. There were two reasons.”

Jinki leans back, letting out a gush of of air. “She was pregnant.”

Yixing hums confirming it. “She was nearly five months, but didn’t appear to be with her belly covered. It was an absurd idea to take her down there and he should’ve known that it would never work.”

“But it sounds like he was doing the only thing he knew would give him a chance to keep her alive.”

“He would have had better chances at doing that if he hadn’t thought to take her to the city to begin with!” shouts Yixing who had pulled away from Jinki and got up to put some space between them. “He should have thought before he carelessly acted! Mermaids don’t show until they’ve reached full term. This being because they would be far too vulnerable to the sea creatures that would swallow us in one bite without a second thought if they swam around with a huge belly. It tends to weigh you down, you know?”

Jinki stood too, but didn’t make to touch Yixing or close the space between them. He just stood there and watched Yixing pace on the dock. “Maybe he thought that the risk was worth taking if there was a chance that she would be okay, that the babies would be okay.”

“You don’t know that danger that he put her through--them through to get to our city! There is a reason why he had to give her his bracelet, Jinki. Our city is hours away from this island and impossible to travel if you are human. He had to give it to her in order for her to survive the swim down there. It’s a damn wonder why they weren’t attacked. The hormones that she was emitting from her body would have been too great for something not to notice. And let’s not forget that the council would have immediately noticed that she wasn’t a true merperson. What with the bump on display and everything.”

“Why are you so worked up over this, Yixing?”

“Because they had her killed, Jinki!” he shouts again, face red and eyes filled with tears. “When they appeared before the council, and he introduced her to them, they didn’t even give him a chance to explain himself. They didn’t even let him speak. The elders of our species are hateful bastards. They love life, but refuse to accept that we were meant to be here in this world just like everyone and everything else. They feel like a higher power created us for people to laugh at like were were some kind of joke. So for one of our kind to create new life with a human, it’s breaking some kind of unwritten law. And the worst part is how they had her killed and who killed her.”

Jinki at this point didn’t care about the distance and Yixing not wanting to be touched.Yixing looked as if he was going to collapse under the weight of all that he was sharing with him. So he walked up to him slowly and reached out for him, curling his fingers tightly around some of the blanket. Yixing went quiet and watched as he slowly tugged him in his direction. “If you were going to get this upset over sharing this with me, you shouldn’t have told me to begin with.” Yixing dips his head in apology, something he had a habit of doing even when he didn’t need to. When Yixing stopped with his body pressed into Jinki’s, Jinki uncurled his fingers from the blanket and wrapped his arms around Yixing. “But I guess that there is no going back at this point, so please continue.”

Yixing nodded and moved a hand out from under the blanket to wipe his eyes. “Zitao isn’t apart of the law enforcement in our city, but the council refuse to let him be out of their reach. You know of the power that he has, but it’s not the only one that he has. He has another power that very little know about.”

“What is it?”

“His tail is a weapon, Jinki, his scales rather. And god’s forgive me, but I don’t think Zitao is being kept against his will.” He forces himself away from Jinki again and turns toward the water. “We need to protect Sehun, Jinki. Zitao hasn’t came to me in my dreams ever since I decided to make a life for myself on land. Now that he has, we can’t just sit by and ignore his warning.”

Jinki walks up beside him and takes his hand into his. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”

♣

“Why won’t you speak?” Chanyeol yells at a the tank, hands balled against the wet surface. The had been cracked from the force he put into pounding on it. Zitao turned his head toward Chanyeol and grinned so wide that it could have pained someone else had they been wearing it. This anger Chanyeol even more. “Have I been too easy on you, Zitao? Have I not made it clear enough to you as to why you are here?”

Zitao let the grin disappear from his face, lifted himself off of the bottom of the tank and swam to the top of it. He grabbed onto the edge of the tank and lifted himself up far enough to keep himself above the water. “You should really be wondering about why I’ve been so compliant with you thus far.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you really think that you could’ve captured me without my remarkable ability to comply with you, the enemy?” Chanyeol steps away from the tank, looking both sick and infuriated. Zitao laughs. “Of course you don’t because your are so blinded with rage that you can’t think or act clearly.”

It was Chanyeol’s turn to laugh this time. Although he still looked sick, he looked like he was the one on that pulled one over on the other. “It’s funny that you think that I haven’t thought about why you’ve been so quick to comply with my every action or demand. But you’ve been mistaken, Zitao. You see, I am not as mentally unstable as you would like to think that I am. I am thinking with a clear head and I act just as clearly. Like in the next thirty minutes for example.”

Zitao slips slightly, but plays it off as if nothing happened. “What are you going to do?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Chanyeol, what are you planning to do?” Zitao calls out to him as he heads back upstairs. “Chanyeol!”

•

Around three in the afternoon, well after Hongbin and Jongin left Sehun to go shopping for dinner, Sehun made his way outside on the beach with a sketch pad and a pencil. He didn’t make a habit of drawing, he just did it because his mother enjoyed the things he would draw. “Your drawing skills are too good to go unused, much less unseen,” she would tell him on days that he finds himself with nothing to do. So he made it a must to draw everything he felt that she would like to see drawn from him. Like the ocean view, for example.

She would be upset if he spent all this time here and didn’t comeback with at least one drawing of the ocean. So he flipped to a fresh page in his sketch pad and began to draw. It took him roughly ten minutes to draw every detail of the shore that he seen. Rocks, abandoned shells from the ocean, huge logs with the waves washing over them. Large amounts of rocks and the waves, too, crashing against them. He even added small crabs and starfish. What really took the longest was the water and all the green surrounding or amongst it.

“You draw really well,” comes a voice about twenty minutes later. Sehun looks up from the last of his unfinished cluster of trees and turns his head to see Chanyeol standing beside him with a smile that almost seemed stupid. “Do you draw often?”

Sehun shakes his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to apologize for whatever I may have done to upset you.”

“You know what you did and I refuse to accept your apology.”

“Oh come on… It wasn’t even that serious and I didn’t mean anything behind it.”

“People don’t upset other people if that wasn’t the initial intention.” Sehun picked up his eraser and sharpener and got up from his spot to head back to the house. “Please leave me alone.”

Chanyeol reached into his pocket and turned to follow after Sehun. “I’m sorry, Sehun,” he tells him, and uncaps the syringe filled with a sedative. He forces it into the side of Sehun’s neck and injects the fluid into him. “But I really cannot do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there is that. I haven't entirely edited this yet because all I have is my phone right now because I broke my tablet and I hardly ever have a computer to properly edit my fics, so I will try to do my best and edited as soon as I can.


End file.
